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This week we finished off texturing our bowling pin model in Blender and then imported it into Unity to use in our game.

UV Unwrap

We started by loading our existing bowling pin model with seams already marked.

The process of unwrapping a 3D model is similar to peeling an orange and pressing the skin flat. The seams we marked are like cuts in the orange’s skin. When we peel it, the pieces between the seams come out separated.

To unpeel the model we entered Edit Mode (TAB key), selected the entire model (A key) and chose UV Unwrap | Unwrap from the Mesh menu. Notice that we don’t see impact of this until we switch to the UV/Image Editor

Switching to UV/Image Editor

Our main panel is normally in 3D View mode. To start working with our texture we click on the icon to the left of the menu options and choose “UV/Image Editor”.

When we change mode we see a flat image with our model split apart and spread out into flat sections. Each of these sections represents a part of our model between a set of seams.

This week we did some basic modelling in Blender. Blender is a very powerful 3D graphics package that is free and open-source. It is supported across all major desktop platforms.

Blender is so large and fully featured that it can be quite intimidating to learn. Knowledge of a few shortcut keys for common operations can really improve the experience of working with the program. We were indebted to Giuliano D’Angelo’s wonderful Blender shortcut infographic for providing us with some quick reference in this regard:

The first thing we covered in Blender was moving about. Practically speaking, Blender requires a three button mouse to operate. In Blender the middle mouse button (MMB) is used to control the view. Used on its own, it tilts the camera. When used with the SHIFT key, it pans the camera instead. CTRL and the MMB are use to zoom, but this is also more often achieved by scrolling the mouse wheel.

Object Mode and Edit Mode

We used Blender in two modes: Object Mode and Edit Mode. The TAB key can be used to switch between these. In Object Mode we can create, select and reposition objects but we cannot do any detailed editing on them. In Edit Mode, we can do any detailed editing we require on the currently selected object. Note that selecting items in Blender is done with the right mouse button (RMB).